Issue 4, 2015

Beliaeva T. V. Strategic Orientations Concept: Main Research Directions.

The purpose of this study is to identify main directions of research on firm’s strategic orientations on the example of entrepreneurial, market and learning orientations, reveal the development of strategic orientations concept over time and provide suggestions for future research in this field. The study provides a systematic analysis of main research on firm’s strategic orientations, published in peer-reviewed academic journals on management, entrepreneurship and marketing in 1987–2015. The articles selected for the analysis investigated at least two strategic orientation types simultaneously and yielded 79 publications. The results have shown that strategic orientations may individually or jointly relate to firm performance. In the first case, different types of orientations are independent, and firms adopt a particular orientation at a time depending on the organizational goals or conditions of external and/or internal environment. In the second case, firms adopt several strategic orientations simultaneously, and different types of orientations interact with each other either by the relationship of mediation or complementarity. Interactions and more complex relationships between strategic orientations are on the foreground in contemporary orientation studies and have potential to contribute to existing knowledge. The number of publications used for the analysis is restricted by the number of studied strategic orientations. The analysis of configurations of multiple strategic orientations depending on different environmental variables, investigation of orientations in a developing context, conducting comparative, longitudinal and qualitative studies are the possible directions for future research. The results have practical implications for researchers working in the field of strategic management and can be applied for carrying out further research on strategic orientations. From the educational viewpoint, they can be used in business schools as a part of general management and strategic management courses. The theoretical contribution of the research is primarily related to the systematization of existing knowledge on strategic orientations by identification of the main research directions in this field. Besides, literature analysis allowed to trace the development of strategic orientations concept over time and identify areas promising for future studies. Keywords: strategic orientations, entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, learning orientation.

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